Bosnian Serb Karadzic handed 40-year sentence

A video grab from a video released by the tribunal shows Karadzic during his trial [Xinhua]

Radovan Karadzic, the former Bosnian Serb leader, has been sentenced to 40 years in prison by United Nations judges for his role in genocide in the former Yugoslavia.

Captured in 2008 and jailed in the Hague, Karadzic was tried by the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia on 11 charges of genocide, murder and terrorism.

He was found guilty on 10 counts, include one count of genocide for the killing of 8,000 men and boys in the Bosnian Muslim region of Srebrenica in 1995.

Karadzic had maintained that the massacre was the action of rogue troops and not committed under his orders.

Karadzic often represented himself during the trial. His lawyer said on Thursday that they would appeal the verdict.

But presiding tribunal judge O-Gon Kwon said Karadzic was the only one with the power to have prevented the massacre.

“On the basis of the totality of the evidence, the [ICTY] finds that the accused shared the expanded common purpose of killing the Bosnian Muslim males of Srebrenica and that he significantly contributed to it,” he said.

A psychiatrist by education, Karadzic quickly became the leader of the Bosnian Serb faction during the 1992-1995 civil war in the wake of the breakup of Yugoslavia.

He helped fashion the breakaway Republika Srpska from Bosnia and Herzegovina.

At least 100,000 Muslims, Croats and Serbs were killed during the conflict.

The Srebrenica killings are considered the worst crime against humanity in Europe since WWII.

The BRICS Post with inputs from Agencies